I.B.M. Buys an AT&T Business Software Unit

The $1.4 billion deal would be I.B.M.’s largest acquisition since it bought Cognos in 2008.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

I.B.M. said on Monday that it had agreed to buy for $1.4 billion the Sterling Commerce unit of AT&T, which makes software that helps businesses buy and sell to each other.

The deal would be I.B.M.’s largest acquisition since it bought the business software maker Cognos in 2008.

Sterling runs “collaboration networks” where companies can interact with vendors. It has 18,000 clients worldwide and enables more than one billion deals a year, I.B.M. and AT&T said in a statement. Customers include the H. J. Heinz Company, Motorola, Boise Cascade and the Boston Market Corporation. The parties would not provide a figure for the unit’s annual revenue.

AT&T, then known as SBC Communications, paid $3.9 billion for Sterling in 2000, near the peak of the Internet bubble. The price tag was driven by forecasts that all business-to-business commerce would soon be conducted through online marketplaces not unlike a stock exchange, with demand dictating prices more efficiently.

The unit, based in Dublin, Ohio, has little connection to AT&T’s main telecommunications business and has maintained its own brand.

An AT&T spokeswoman, McCall Butler, said AT&T’s business had changed since 2000, and Sterling was “no longer core to the company’s long-term strategic objectives.”

Ms. Butler said with the help of I.B.M.’s purchase price, operating contributions and tax benefits, AT&T would recoup most of its investment in Sterling. AT&T expects a one-time pretax gain of about $750 million when the deal closes sometime in the second half of the year.

I.B.M. is based in Armonk, N.Y., and AT&T is based in Dallas.

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